xayacatl.

Headword: 
xayacatl.
Principal English Translation: 

face, mask (see Molina and Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
xaiacatl
IPAspelling: 
ʃɑːyɑkɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

xayacatl. cara o rostro, caratula o maxcara.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 158r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

XĀYAC(A)-TL face; mask / cara o rostro, carátula o mascara (M) Z has the variant XĀYAC-TLI, while X has a reduplicated form with the same sense. When –TZIN is added to this reduplicated form in X, it is used to mean ‘horsefly.’
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 322.

Attestations from sources in English: 

çan yayactzintli catca amo qualxayaque yhuan çan pitzahuactzintli catca amo nacayo = she was quite weak, had not a pretty face, was quite thin, was not fleshy. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 1, 136–137.

yn achtopa oquimocopinilicah yn maestroz yn tlapallaCuiloque pintores amo yuhcatzintli omoquixti yn itlaÇoxayacatzin = The first time the master artisans, the painters, had made a copy of him, his precious face did not come out as a good likeness
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 148–149.

toxayac titixtlaça = Our face: We turn away our face in disgust or rage (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 255.

xaiacatl = face (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 112.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

iniquac mocha in intlalnacayo pozahua, xayacacoztia, amiqui, ihuan ahuel maxixa, ahuel atl quinoquia = cuando toda la su carne terrestre (cuerpo) está hinchado se vuelve amarilla la cara tienen sed y no poder orinan no poder agua lo derraman (centro de México, s. XVIII)
Neville Stiles, Jeff Burnham, James Nauman, "Los concejos médicos del Dr. Bartolache sobre las pastillas de fierro: Un documento colonial en el náhuatl del siglo XVIII," Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 19 (1989), 269–287, ver página 281.

auh in cuaxaiacatl caltech pilcaia quihualito: “Ca zan iuhqui o, yn atle noconitosnequi”. Nima motlato huehuento quicuitihuetzito cuauhxaiacatl, ythualco quihualmaiauh yc hualamotlac. Oncan i yntetzauh omochiuh çeiohual çemihuitl tlatilulca = y una máscara de madera que estaba colgada en la pared dijo: “Siendo así, yo no quiero decir nada”. Entonces corrió el viejecillo, cogió la máscara, y la azotó contra el suelo. Estos fueron los agüeros de los tlatelolcas de noche y de día. (Mexico City, c. 1572)
Ana Rita Valero de García Lascuráin and Rafael Tena, Códice Cozcatzin (México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 1994), 103.

themes: 
Anatomy